


A Rather Unpleasant Epiphany

by clickingkeyboards



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Resurrection, Sibling Love, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26070952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: DEATH SETS SAIL SPOILERSHazel is waiting in the library for Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy to return, but when she hears Bertie on the landing instead, the figure beside her suddenly poses a rather alarming problem.
Relationships: Bertie Wells & Daisy Wells, Daisy Wells & Hazel Wong, Harold Mukherjee/Bertie Wells
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	A Rather Unpleasant Epiphany

Quiet feet padded down the stairs, and Daisy and I squeezed each other’s hands, waiting for Felix and Lucy to flourish into the room with case notes and explain the new and exciting case to us.

“Dear,” said a decidedly male voice, “which door are we leaving through?”

“Front door,” replied a more tired voice, and I heard the heavy steps that I had started to attribute to someone who has decidedly stopped caring. “The keys are— they’re in the bottom of the umbrella stand.”

“Got them, Bertie.” Harold’s soft voice carried through the slightly ajar door to the library. “Let’s go on a walk, then. Come on, I’m proud of you for dragging yourself out of this stupor.”

There was a shuffling noise and it sounded like Bertie was pressing himself into Harold’s arms. I pressed my hand over my mouth, and Daisy’s fingernails were digging into my wrist so hard it hurt. “Fucking… god. I have five favourite people. You’re right here beside me, one of them is a murderer, two of them didn’t even bother to turn up, and one of them is dead at the bottom of the  _ fucking Nile _ !”

“I know.”

The pause was heavy, and then Bertie said, weakly, “Who else is up this early? The library light is on.”

“Maybe it’s your aunt and uncle?” Harold suggested, and I heard their shoes coming towards the door. 

“I intend to give them a piece of my mind, how dare they not turn up at Daisy’s memorial!”

I squeezed my eyes shut, and the scarab beetle pressed into my palm, and then the door swung open and Bertie said, “Hazel?”

Daisy was nowhere to be seen, vanished from my side. In barely-concealed panic, I looked this way and that, afraid that I had imagined Daisy standing right there in front of me. Then I noticed the press of her shoes in the carpet, imperceptible to someone who isn’t a detective, leading to one of the bookshelves beside the long and thick curtains.

“Hello Bertie. And Harold.”

Harold gave me one of his uncertain smiles. Since they arrived, he hadn’t seemed to know where to look. Everybody was up in arms about everything after the memorial: Bertie spent half of his time looking like he wanted to hit everyone and the other half looking like he was going to shatter, Kitty pounced on him with flirtatious comments the moment she arrived, and he was (as Alexander put it) ‘proper freaked out’ from overhearing some gossip about Lavinia and his brother. 

After shuffling his feet, Bertie sat down in one of the other chairs, more hunched and wretched-looking than he was at Daisy’s memorial. “Hideous to be back here again. I never thought I would be.”

“It’s strange.”

“Being in my room is awful. I haven’t been in it since the Easter before last.”

At the mention of Stephen, I felt myself cringe. “I’m sorry.”

He smiled at me, a pained and lopsided smile, and said, “It’s alright. You’re suffering as much as me, Hazel dear.”

Then soft, practised footsteps came down the stairs, and Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy swept into the room. “Daisy, Hazel?” Uncle Felix called out in a conspiratorial whisper.

My hand clenched into a fist around the scarab beetle, so hard that it marked the pattern in my palm. Harold, sitting pressed against Bertie’s side with his hand on his knee, reflexively jerked away to the other side of the sofa. From the window, there was an almost imperceptible rustle from behind the curtains.

The pause stretched and on and on, and the moment that I thought I could bear it no longer, Bertie croaked, “ _ Daisy _ ?”

Hopelessly, he stared at Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy, all manner of emotions fluttering across his furious features until it hurt to watch. Instead, I turned my gaze to Harold. He was looking down, beside my armchair and at the two deep footprints imprinted into the carpet. Decidedly the work of  _ shoes _ . He looked at my slippers, and back to the footprints, and then followed the trail of footprints away from my chair and into the corner. We both saw a pair of patent leather shoes briefly shift from beneath the curtains. There was no mistaking it.

“No,” he said, clear as crystal, and blending into Bertie’s wretched, “ _ Why didn’t you come?” _

Then he shattered, and it hurt my heart to hear it happen. It was like a howl, or an anguished cry, or a low scream, and even Daisy started. I watched the curtains jerk.

Harold tried to grab his hands, and Bertie lashed out and then reached for him, saw Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy in the doorway and jerked away again. He cried and cried, and pushed Harold away until he was hopelessly watching Bertie cry, and I could see on his face how painful it was for him.

I couldn’t hear him cry any longer.

In my boldest, most Detective Society President voice I could muster, I said, “Daisy.”

In a flourish of fabric, Daisy emerged from behind the curtains just as I had willed, and said the utterly ordinary sentence, “Good heavens, what have I missed?”

Bertie stood up with total purpose, his jaw set and his eyes hard, and took one step towards Daisy before crumpling into a dead faint.

_ Convenient,  _ said the Daisy inside my head.  _ Just like a book. _

I looked up at her, and realised that she was thinking the exact thing that I imagined she would.

Harold leapt to his feet as Bertie fell, and caught him as he fell, a dead weight against his chest. Although it sounds ridiculous to write, until that moment I did not quite realise that they were together. Of course, I knew intellectually that they were carrying on in secret. But, even though Harold had come down to Fallingford at a moments’ notice so that Bertie wouldn’t be alone, stood silently by Bertie’s side at the memorial with one hand on his arm on solidarity, and snuck out for a walk with him in the middle of the night, I did not fully realise that they  _ cared  _ for each other.

Not until Harold helped Bertie to lay down on the sofa, brushed his unruly blond hair out of his face, and said, “ _ Darling _ ,” in a very deliberate voice.

“Curtains are dreadfully stuffy to hide behind,” Daisy whispered to me as she walked to stand at my side, looping her arm through mine. “Oh, for goodness sake. Bertie. Bertie! BERTIE!”

Uncle Felix shot her a very sharp warning look.

“You know, Hazel, I think I’m deciding against my brilliant idea to frighten the life out of everyone in turn this morning. I don’t want to make people faint,” Daisy whispered to me, and I raised my eyebrows, surprised by her consideration. Before, she would have taken every opportunity to make someone faint from the shock of being her Holmes-like resurrection.

After a few moments, Bertie’s eyes fluttered and Harold looked quite alarmed when Bertie reached for his hands. “Bertie—“

“I don’t care!”

I closed my eyes politely, and Daisy clearly didn’t judging by the way she squeezed my arm in shock. 

When I opened my eyes, Bertie took a very deep breath and said, in an astonishingly calm voice, “Daisy Wells, I am unimaginably furious at you so I will hug you once I’ve got this out.” After his measured statement, he took a deep breath and screamed the most astonishing expletives at Daisy until he was red in the face, berating her for breaking his heart and not letting her get a word in.

Harold looked slightly like he wanted to die. 

When he was done, he got to his feet, rushed across the room, and grabbed Daisy in a fierce hug. “ _ Never  _ do that to me again, Squashy.”

“Got it,” Daisy replied, a little faintly with a stumble in her step. “Sorry about… dying. A little bit.”

Harold still looked mortified, but a little happier. Smiling at him awkwardly, I walked over and sat beside him. After looking over at Bertie, still crushing Daisy in his arms, he nodded towards Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy, mouthing,  _ Do you think they noticed? _

It took me a moment to realise that he was referring to Bertie kissing him, and another to realise that he was joking. I chuckled into my hand, and he smiled, and then we looked back to Bertie and Daisy together.

Daisy was crying.

Bertie reassured her and called her an idiot, and then Daisy stiffly pulled away and nodded, clearly flustered and embarrassed and (I guessed) feeling a little bit bad for herself. Taking a deep and rasping breath, Bertie moved to collapse on the sofa on Harold’s other side. Daisy moved to flop down on top of me, and Uncle Felix finally spoke.

“Ah, the Wells family all in one room! Family dinners are going to be an interesting affair, aren’t they?”

Harold looked alarmed and pleased all at once, Bertie and Lucy laughed, and I felt myself go pink with pleasure. Daisy squeezed my hand and looked around the room, at each face in turn. “No, it’s hardly interesting until at least  _ half  _ of us are legally dead.”

“I volunteer Felix,” Lucy said.

He glared at her, Bertie volunteered Harold, and Daisy turned to sparkle at me. “Do you think Amina’s included too?” she whispered.

“Only if Alexander is as well,” I replied.

She raised her eyebrows and said, “ _ Hazel Wong _ , you didn’t!” and it suddenly felt as if Daisy had never been away at all.


End file.
